The Fly by Katherine Mansfield

“The Fly” Having read many pieces of literature through short stories, it is evident that each story has its own unique use of symbolism. Diverse characters in each work of literature are used to demonstrate these forms of symbolism. The boss and his inner conflict illustrate a great deal of symbolism in “The Fly” by Katherine Mansfield. The boss’s perception of the actions of the fly creates an interesting view of the comparison of his father-son, father-fly relationship. Katherine Mansfield, a famous realist, who uses concrete images, appeals to many readers because she incorporates her life into the stories she writes. Much attention is paid to the central character, the boss and his life (Schoenberg). It is interesting how Katherine Mansfield shows us how the boss makes a connection between the fly and his son. The Boss views the fly as symbolizing his son and the different struggles the son faced in his life and how the young son’s life ended in death. This comparison is made by the author when she describes the fly struggle to free his body of the heavy ink which eventually leads to his death. The boss’s remarks about the fly’s courage to keep living is perhaps how he felt about his son’s courage on the battlefield. The Boss is very affected by the loss of his son in World War I. He focuses more on the outside world, “Come on, Look Sharp” (Mansfield 511) than the inside consisting of being loving and caring. His name the boss demonstrates the need to feel superior to others and prevents him from being on the same friendly level with others. Since the boss has no wife or other children, when his son dies he experiences a great deal of emptiness and turns into a broken man. This is because he feels as if his son is the only thing that gave meaning to his life. The boss lacks real inner strength and proves this by not being able to go and visit his son’s grave. It is perceptible that he is in denial about his son’s death (Schoenberg)....

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

...﻿Prose Appreciation – “The Fly” by KatherineMansfield
“The Fly” by KatherineMansfield is a short story which focuses on the trials and tribulations faced by those who lost relatives in World War One. Many who lost family and friends in the war struggled for years with grief, while others accepted the shortcomings and managed to overcome it. Everyone faced their own challenges, and everyone overcame them different ways, or in some cases not at all.
KatherineMansfield is one of many people who lost relatives in the war. She herself lost her brother in WW1 like Mr. Woodifield and the boss did. She wrote this story because she felt like she was a victim of helplessness and darkness, struggling with grief and also struggling with the Tuberculosis treatment she was going through at the time. This relates to the story because the boss felt like he was on his own after the death of his son, “Ever since his birth the boss had worked at building up this business for him; it had no other meaning if it was not for the boy.” He felt like he had no reason to do anything, like he was helpless and in the dark.
The theme ‘time is a great healer’ fits these thoughts, because no matter what the boss might think, over time he is slowly getting over the death of his son even though he said “Time, he declared then, he had told everybody, could make no difference.” Six years...

...the discontinuities, lacunae, and tensions of modern life. She was born in 1888 in Wellington, a town labeled “the empire city” by its white inhabitants, who modeled themselves on British life and relished their city’s bourgeois respectability.[1] At an early age, Mansfield witnessed the disjuncture between the colonial and the native, or Maori, ways of life, prompting her to criticize the treatment of the Maoris in several diary entries and short stories.[2] Mansfield’s biographer, Angela Smith, writes: “It was her childhood experience of living in a society where one way of life was imposed on another, and did not quite fit in” that sharpened her modernist impulse to focus on moments of “disruption” or encounters with “strange or disturbing” aspects of life.[3]
Her feelings of disjuncture were accentuated when she arrived in Britain in 1903 to attend Queen’s College. In many respects, Mansfield remained a lifelong outsider, a traveler between two seemingly similar yet profoundly different worlds. After briefly returning to New Zealand in 1906, she moved back to Europe in 1908, living and writing in England and parts of continental Europe. Until her premature death from tuberculosis at the age of 34, Mansfield remained in Europe, leading a Bohemian, unconventional way of life.
The Domestic Picturesque
Mansfield’s short story “Prelude” is set in New Zealand and dramatizes the disjunctures of colonial life through an...

...Rosie Gorrie
Essay- writers consistently use short stories as a lens through which they scrutinise society.
KatherineMansfield uses short stories as lens, to show how during the 1920's; in a society purely focused on keeping the old traditions alive and leaving new ways of thinking and change in the dark. Mansfield uses her short stories to uncover the harsh reality of gender biased marriages in which power and control were held by the male and how status and reputation allowed people to act a certain way and still be accepted by society. This enabled the males to dictate the family how they wanted to and power was a very desirable item to have in life; it also highlights how the women of the 1920's were very vulnerable and powerless due to the traditions which said that they couldn't work and make a life for themselves, making marriage their only way out to have a life.
Control means to have 'power to direct something or power over something', 'To exercise restraint or dominate over'. Stanley from Prelude shows his power by moving his family into the country. This decision is driven by his insecurities of status in society, that the only way to earn respect of his peers is to hold a large amount of land; and because he is the 'man' of the house, he holds the power over his family and doesn't consult with his wife or family but simply tells them that they are moving. Beryl, Linda's sister voices her thoughts to her friend in a...

...KatherineMansfieldKatherineMansfield, who lived from 1888 to 1923, is considered to be one of the most remarkable short story writers of her time. Using her life experiences as an inspiration for her short stories, Mansfield sculpted her ideas into masterful pieces of literary work. Mansfield's life was full of interesting experiences that shaped her outlook upon life. The diversity of friends and acquaintances KatherineMansfield had over her lifetime also had a great influence on her career. Even as a child, Mansfield made decisions about her life that would create a path for her career to start on. KatherineMansfield was born Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp to Harold and Annie Dyer Beauchamp on October 14, 1888. The Beauchamp family called New Zealand their home. "A Sea Voyage", written by the young Kathleen Beauchamp, won first-place at the Karori Village School, the grammar school she first attended (Nathan 1). This accomplishment encouraged young Beauchamp to continue on writing. After attending grammar school, Kathleen went on to attend Miss Swainson's Secondary School. During this time, she is acquainted with Maata Mahupuka, a native Maori. Her interest in Mahupuka later grew into a brief love affair with him (Nathan 1). After graduating from secondary school, Miss Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp left...

..._THE FLY_
The story "Fly" by KatherineMansfield throws light on the fact that time is a great healer and it conquers grief. The story begins when Mr. Woodifield comes to see his ex-boss. He is retired and is a heart patient. He praises the new setting and furniture of the office. Then the boss offers him whisky. After drinking it, Mr. Woodifield remembers what he has forgotten. He tells the boss that his daughters have visited the graves of the boss's as well as Mr. Woodsfield's son. Actually, they have died in a war.
The reaction of the Boss is that of a father over the death of his only son. However, he does not express his grief before Mr. Woodifield. When Mr. Woodifield has gone, he sits in his chair. He asks Mr. Macey that he will see nobody for half an hour. He wants to feel the same pang of grief. The writer describes his condition, "He wanted, he intended, he had arranged to weep…" It is a terrible shock to him when Mr. Woodifield mentions the grave of his son. He imagines his son lying in his grave. He groans, "My son!" However, no tears come yet.
In the past, in the first months and even years after the death of his son he could not control his tears. He thought that the time would never change the condition of his grief. He had developed his business for his son. Everybody liked his son. However, he went to a war and died. When he received a telegram about his death, he felt the whole place crashing about his head....

...Man’s Inhumanity to Man as reflected in “The Fly” by KatherineMansfield
--------
An Analysis of the Concepts of Modernity as reflected in the short story “The Fly” by KatherineMansfield
--------
In Partial Fulfillment
Of the Requirements for the Course
Modern Literature (Lit 162)
--------
By
Tan, Vincent Paul G.
B. S. Business Administration
“The Fly”
by KatherineMansfield
I. Introduction: KatherineMansfield
A. Life
B. Works
C. Influences
II. “The Fly
A. Synopsis
B. Analysis
1. Theme
2. Techniques
3. Concepts of Modernity
III. Evaluation
A. Relevance of the Theme in Modern times
B. Effectiveness of Techniques in relation to content
C. Social, Cultural Relevance in Modern times
IV. Conclusion
Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp Murry (14 October 1888 – 9 January 1923) was a prominent modernist writer of short fiction who was born and brought up in colonial New Zealand and wrote under the pen name of KatherineMansfield. Mansfield left for Great Britain in 1908 where she encountered Modernist writers such as D.H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf with whom she became close friends. Her stories often focus on moments of disruption and frequently open rather abruptly. Among her...

...Brill”
KatherineMansfield, born in the country of New Zealand was said to be ‘the best short story writer of her time’.(1) The types of short stories that KatherineMansfield wrote were mostly a ‘slice of life’, where she used real life experiences to express her themes and ideas. If you were to read one of her stories once through, in a way that you would read a whole book, you would surely miss out on the way KatherineMansfield conveys meaning in her stories. Throughout her stories she uses every word for a purpose. I understand that economy of style is an aspect of the short story genre, but KatherineMansfield sought to enhance this, and I believe she really used her writing as an art getting every detail right to make her short stories full and rich with meaning. I was engaged by the way she could take something so simple, such as objects, like lamps and hats and make it represent something so immense. KatherineMansfield was born into the Victorian era, and was part of a middle classed family. During the Victorian time there was much distinction between the social classes. KatherineMansfield however, was one who did not want to conform in order to please others, but saw the upper class as being devoid of warmth and feeling for humanity. This is revealed through some of her short stories, where her...

...Taking the Veil
(by KatherineMansfield)
It seemed impossible that anyone should be unhappy on such a beautiful morning. Nobody was, decided Edna, except herself. The windows were flung wide in the houses. From within there came the sound of pianos, little hands chased after each other and ran away fluttered in the sunny gardens, all bright with spring flowers. Street boys whistled, a little dog barked; people passed by, walking so lightly, so swiftly, they looked as though they wanted to break into a run. Now she actually saw in the distance a parasol of the year.
Perhaps even Edna did not look quite as unhappy as she felt. It is not easy to look tragic at eighteen, when you are extremely pretty, with the cheeks and lips and shinning eyes of perfect health. Above all, when you are wearing a French blue frock and your new spring hat trimmed with cornflowers. True, she carried under her arm a book bound in horrid black leather. Perhaps the book provided a gloomy note, but only by accident; it was the ordinary Library binding. For Edna had made going to the Library an excuse for getting out of the house to think, to realize what had happened, to decide somehow what was to be done now.
An awful thing happened. Quite suddenly, at the theatre last night, when she and Jimmy were seated side by side in the dress-circle, without a moment’s warning – in fact, she had just finished a chocolate almond and passed the box to him again – she had fallen...